Andrew took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, a long sigh that to me sounded like he was about to try to reason with a toddler. Which made me even angrier.
“The truth is I’m not happy about it either, Higs.”
I bristled at him using my nickname. It was a throwback from college and no one called me that now.
“The last thing I want to do is bicker with you every day,” he continued. “Because God knows that’s the only way we can communicate.”
I thought about the pub trivia nights we’d been dragged to and how many times we’d go head-to-head about an answer, arguing until we almost missed the cutoff buzzer. The number of times he was right was too embarrassing for me to admit, because I’d always told myself thatIwas the smart one, andhewas the hot one. Deep down I had a feeling that there was more to him than just his good-time persona, but it wasn’t like he shared that side with me, and what other weapon did I have against someone who seemed flawless in every other way? I’d quickly learned that one dig about his intelligence was usually enough to short-circuit his commentary about my jeans being too baggy.
I stared at the mountain in front of me and realized that the real Andrew was back, without any of the fake friendliness he’dbeen deploying so far. It was the version of him that used to watch me with that judgy expression, like he smelled something unpleasant. Sometimes I swore I caught him rolling his eyes at me, like when I talked about my workload. To him, school was a cakewalk of sports and parties.
And girls. Couldn’t forget about that part.
It was pointless to revisit any of the past with him so I switched gears to the very shitty here and now.
“There’s no reason for us to pretend like we’re friends and we both know it,” I said plainly.
“Exactly, agreed,” he responded, almost too quickly. “So I’ll stick to my side of the building and you stick to yours. Does that work for you?”
“Yeah, if you stop leaving your trash on the ground,” I said in a Gretchen Wieners you-can’t-sit-with-us voice that made me cringe. “The raccoons get into everything.”
He clenched his jaw, Gibson Glaring at me. “Any other rules I should know about, Miss Higgins?”
I had a list of them I could rattle off, but opted to go with the most pressing one. Andrew took a few steps closer, probably hoping that looming over me would intimidate me.
“Yes. You have to stick to the assigned parking spaces,” I said, standing up straighter and pointing to what had to be his Jeep parked in one of my reserved spots.
He made a sharp, exasperated noise. “Jesus, Chels, I was literally pulling out when I saw that your door was open and parked there because I was trying to help you! And for fuck’s sake, it’s after hours so not like you’re using it.”
“How was barging into my building helping me? You’re the one who set off the alarm!”
“Oh, you’vegotto be fucking kidding me, Chelsea,” he said in a low voice, nostrils flaring.
We stared at each other as buried hurts from our past zombie-clawed their way into the present. I drew myself to my full, admittedly unimpressive, height and met his glower with my own furrowed intimidation, unwilling to back down even though my heart was galloping from the nearness of him.
My breathing went shallow as his eyes tracked all over my face. I had a flashback to him doing the same thing all those years ago, which I’d always chalked up to him trying to figure out if I was in the same species as the sorority girls he was trying to get into bed. I fought the urge to smooth my hand along my cheek to check if there was any charcoal patch left as his gaze bounced from my eyes to my mouth and then back to my eyes again.
Being this close to him after not seeing him for so long, and beingstudiedby him again from beneath that perma-arched brow, left me feeling as unstable and woozy as that night on the boat. Only this time I couldn’t chalk up the feeling to copious amounts of champagne and my tendency toward motion sickness.
It was because of the force field he had around him. That magnetic pull to watch him that no one could avoid. He’d caught me getting sucked into it a few times, the most embarrassing being that early spring day when everyone was spread out on the lawn pretending the late April sun was actually the beginning of summer. Andrew had peeled off his shirt in slow motion and I, like every other red-blooded woman in the area, had watched him. I didn’twantto look, but the moment was almost cinematic, lit by the sun and choreographed. As heflicked his shirt to the ground it wasmygaze he caught, leaving me to wish I could slap the smug smile of victory off his face.
“Listen, we both agree that this situation sucks,” I said. “You could’ve avoided it by choosing a different space—”
Andrew opened his mouth, but I flashed my hand at him so I could continue uninterrupted.
“But you’re here and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it until your lease is up.”
He snorted. “That’s funny, you’re assuming that I’m going to leave when my lease ends.”
I ignored him. “The only way this is going to work out is if we agree to more rules: keep Dude leashed, maintain the common areas, only park where you’re supposed to, and don’t enter my building unless I ask you to.”
“Ah, so you’re relegating me to vampire status.”
I furrowed at him in confusion.
“I can’t go into your home unless you invite me.”
“It’s not my home,” I scoffed.
